Getting the inside scoop on the Food Network

Mario Batali

There's a new book out, From Scratch: Inside the Food Network by Allen Salkin, that describes the 20 years that the Food Network has been on. The Daily Meal has produced an interesting slideshow - 20 Surprising Facts about Food Network and Its Stars - that watchers may not be aware of. Here are five that we found especially interesting:

Emeril Lagasse's famous "Bam" originated when he had to wake up camera operators who were falling asleep from being overworked.
Mario Batali, during one of his earliest shows, grated his knuckles badly and since there were no "do-overs" hid his hand by dunking it in a bowl of tomatoes and crushing them continuously.
William Shatner (Captain Kirk from Star Trek) was the original host on Iron Chef - which was on another network.
David Rosengarten, an early Food Network stalwart, was so forgotten that a staffer called him to ask whether he'd like to audition for The Next Food Network Star.
In the original design for Chopped, the food would be served by a butler and fed at the end to a Chihuahua named Pico.

Photo of Mario Batali for Iron Chef promo

2 comments

FuzzyChefOctober 10, 2013

Um, Iron Chef was originally a Japanese TV show in the late 90's, recorded in Tokyo with an all-Japanese cast and script. There weren't even subtitles available for the first two seasons. So I kinda doubt William Shatner was involved.

TrishaCPOctober 17, 2013

Sad that I remember this, but there WAS in fact a William Shatner Iron Chef remake on UPN back in the day. It was the first American re-make of the Japanese Iron Chef show.